China’s largest Bitcoin exchange stopped accepting renminbi deposits on Wednesday, causing the price of the virtual currency to drop dramatically.

BTC China announced on Wednesday that it was forced to stop accepting deposits in renminbi, the Chinese currency, the New York Times reports. The announcement came less than two weeks after China’s central bank and government agencies announced that Chinese financial institutions were banned from dealing in the virtual currency. The announcement that BTC China would no longer accept renminbi for Bitcoin caused the price of the virtual currency to tumble. By mid-afternoon on Wednesday local time, the value of Bitcoin had dropped 30 percent on the exchange, and its value was less than half of what it was at the beginning of the month.

When China’s central bank first announced the ban, a spokesman said Bitcoin “is not issued by a central monetary authority, it does not have the properties of legal currency and it is not a currency in the real meaning of the word.”